Transport Capital as a Determinant of Tourism Development: A Time Series Approach

Little serious research has been undertaken into the significance of transport as a factor in destination development despite being acknowledged by many writers. The paper aims at identifying and quantifying the factors that made Mauritius attractive to tourists and also to more importantly to investigate the importance transportation capital in the overall destination’s attractiveness. The novelty of this paper is that is extends a classical demand for international tourism function to include a proxy of public capital stock which has been decoupled into transport and non-transport infrastructure, and also uses co-integration analysis to model the determinants of tourism for a small island economy case. Results from the analysis show that transport capital stock of the country has been contributing positively of the number of tourist arrival in both short and long run. Tourism infrastructure is reported to be a more important ingredient than transport in the tourism equation. Non transport infrastructure, though having a positive sign, was however found to be insignificant. The study thus highlights the importance of transport capital in adding to the value of service and experience received by tourism.